Japanese Stock Futures Gain on U.S. Housing, China GDP

Oct. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Japanese stock futures and
Australian equities rose as a jump in U.S. housing starts
boosted investor confidence in the global economic outlook ahead
of a report today that may show China’s slowdown is ebbing.

Futures on Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average expiring in
December closed at 8,865 in Chicago yesterday, up from 8,810 in
Osaka, Japan. They were bid in the pre-market at 8,860 in Osaka
at 8:05 a.m. local time. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index gained
0.9 percent today. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index rose 0.5 percent
in Wellington.

“Investors are taking advantage of attractive valuations
and a slightly improved outlook for the global economy,” said
Matthew Sherwood, Perpetual Investments’ head of investment
markets research in Sydney. Perpetual manages about $25 billion.
“Later in China we get the all-important September quarter
GDP.”

Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index were little
changed today. The gauge advanced 0.4 percent yesterday. An
index of 11 U.S. homebuilders surged 3.2 percent after housing
starts jumped 15 percent to a four-year-high annual rate of
872,000 last month, exceeding all forecasts in a Bloomberg
survey of economists.

Stimulus Measures

Chinese stocks in New York jumped yesterday, pushing the
benchmark index to its longest rally in 15 months, on prospects
the government’s gross domestic product report to be released in
Beijing today will signal the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy is ebbing. The Bloomberg China-US Equity Index
of the most-traded Chinese companies in the U.S. climbed 0.4
percent to 95.76.

Gross domestic product probably expanded 7.4 percent in the
July-September period from a year earlier, based on the median
estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 43 economists. The
economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter. The government
will also report September data for industrial production and
retail sales and January-to-September figures for fixed-asset
investment.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rebounded 13 percent through
yesterday from this year’s low on June 4 as stimulus measures in
Europe, the U.S., Japan and China boosted market sentiment amid
a global economic slowdown and Europe’s debt crisis. The Asian
benchmark traded at 13 times estimated earnings on average,
compared with 13.9 for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and 12.3
for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index.